Sunday, June 22, 2014

Egotarian cuisine and it's a very male thing

Tim Hayward, an Financial Times Weekend contributing writer and winner of the Fortnum & Mason and Guild of Food Writers’ awards for food writer of the year, has an insightful piece this morning drawing attention to a new trend in restaurant cooking. Egotarian cuisine is the name coined by Alan Richman writing in the US magazine GQ and Hayward wishes he had written it. As he says, egotarian cuisine "ties up all the irritants of modern dining into one neat package and then punts it neatly into a bin."
So what exactly is the irritant? Richman described the new and pervasive kind of cuisine in this way:
... obscure, often foraged ingredients, weird combinations, tiny portions, tableside “narrative” from the server, tasting menus, it is simultaneously “intellectual … yet often thoughtless” but, above all, it centres on the chef, whose ideas, creativity and personality it’s all about. “The job of the customer is to eat what’s placed before him, and then applaud.” And because there’s no name for this trend yet, he handily coins one, “Egotarian Cuisine”.
What Hayward adds is an insight he gained from a series of discussions he hosted recently on women in food.
Each night I read out Richman’s assertion and each night, the reaction was similar.
“Well yes! Obviously,” was one of the repeatable responses. Sometimes followed by “ … and you’re remotely surprised?” or on other occasions with a sort of weary and indulgent chuckle.
I could not find, among panel or audience, anyone who would disagree that the kind of cooking we’ve grown to accept as the cutting edge of our national cuisine was anything other than an elaborate competition between idiotic boys. Nobody actually used the term “pissing contest” but that was solely because they were too polite.

Eating with our eyes


Support for the idea that presenting food in an aesthetically pleasing manner can enhance the experience of a dish comes from an interesting study by University of Oxford academics. Their paper "A taste of Kandinsky: assessing the influence of the artistic visual presentation of food on the dining experience" is published this month in the journal Flavour.
The researchers report on a study designed to assess whether placing the culinary elements of a dish in an art-inspired manner would modify the diner’s expectations and hence their experience of food.
The dish, a salad, was arranged in one of three different presentations: One simply plated (with all of the elements of the salad tossed together), another with the elements arranged to look like one of Kandinsky’s paintings, and a third arrangement in which the elements were organized in a neat (but non-artistic) manner. The participants answered two questionnaires, one presented prior to and the other after eating the dish, to evaluate their expectations and actual sensory experience.
Results
Prior to consumption, the art-inspired presentation resulted in the food being considered as more artistic, more complex, and more liked than either of the other presentations. The participants were also willing to pay more for the Kandinsky-inspired plating. Interestingly, after consumption, the results revealed higher tastiness ratings for the art-inspired presentation.
Conclusions
These results support the idea that presenting food in an aesthetically pleasing manner can enhance the experience of a dish. In particular, the use of artistic (visual) influences can enhance a diner’s rating of the flavour of a dish. These results are consistent with previous findings, suggesting that visual display of a food can influence both a person’s expectations and their subsequent experience of a dish, and with the common assumption that we eat with our eyes first.

Sunday, June 15, 2014

A black bean stew that is brewed with a variety of salted and smoked pork and beef products

How to Make Feijoada, Brazil's National Dish, Including a Recipe From Emeril Lagasse | Arts & Culture | Smithsonian:




The word feijoada comes from the word feijão, which is Portuguese for beans. Feijoada is a black bean stew that is brewed with a variety of salted and smoked pork and beef products from carne-seca to smoked pork spareribs. The more traditional feijoada also includes “cheaper” cuts such as pig’s ears, feet and tails, and beef tongue. The rich, smoky stew is then served with rice, sautéed collard greens or kale, orange slices and topped with toasted cassava flour (farofa). The meal is just as warm, comforting, rich and vibrant as the music, people and culture of Brazil.
It is on the menu at every food establishment from casual buffets to the top restaurants. The dish is so integrated into Brazilian culture that Saturday is known as the day of feijoada. It is not just a meal but also an event to share with family and friends.

'via Blog this'

Saturday, June 14, 2014

A drink to comfort the heart - aloo bukhara juice

Taking time off from covering airport shootings, drone attacks and other assorted bombings, National Public Radio's Pakistan correspondent found time for a glass of aloo bukhara juice. How could he resist?


The sign behind the gentleman he saw drinking a glass on a 104 degree Fahrenheit day defined the benefits thus:
"Comforts the heart; increases the appetite; keeps your stomach in good order; boosts your iron count; subdues burning in the hands, feet or chest; protects you from jaundice, and is a panacea for any illness caused by an ailing liver."
What the sign did not add about the sweet and pungent spicy brew is that Prunus bokharensis plums, as well as being suitable to be eaten raw, cooked and dried, can be used also to clean metal.

A fascinating insight into modernist cuisine with its sous-vide vacuum sealers, ultrasonic homogenizers and centrifuges

Dwight Garner of the New York Times went to dinner with Ferran Adrià, the Catalan chef, at the home laboratory of Nathan Myhrvold, the Microsoft multimillionaire and inventor turned cookbook writer.

Garner's report on "The End of Cuisine" gives a fascinating insight into "the culinary movement that’s become known as modernist cuisine, one that’s pushed chefs and intrepid home cooks to master a new batterie de cuisine (sous-vide vacuum sealers, ultrasonic homogenizers, centrifuges) and to fill their pantries with staples like xanthan gum and liquid lecithin."




 Or, Dwight Garner might have added, about wine:
The “America” portion of the menu, which included “Baked-potato Soup,” “Salmon,” “Roast Chicken,” “Rye” and “Pastrami,” were demonstrations of farm-to-table on a high level. It also included “Wine,” which he likes to salt. He does this because it balances the wine’s flavors, especially those that are harsher and more tannic, but also because it’s a lively way to flush out the snobs. “Doing something like this is such a strong cultural taboo that it freaks people out,” Myhrvold said. “The way we treat wine is governed by an implicit set of rules and strictures that rival fundamentalist religions in their severity and intensity. It shocks people to put salt in wine. But why? It’s just food!”



Thursday, June 12, 2014

Powerhouse fruits and vegetables - the ones that do you most good

That humble watercress is the pick of the crops. Researchers from William Paterson University in New Jersey have done the sums and rated it top based on the amounts of 17 critical nutrients contained in fruit and vegetables.
"National nutrition guidelines emphasize consumption of powerhouse fruits and vegetables (PFV), foods most strongly associated with reduced chronic disease risk; yet efforts to define PFV are lacking" says the study published this week in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention journal Preventing Chronic Disease.
The foods are scored by their content of fiber, potassium, protein, calcium, folate, vitamin B12, vitamin A, vitamin D and other nutrients, all considered important to public health. Of 47 foods studied, all but 6 (raspberry, tangerine, cranberry, garlic, onion, and blueberry) satisfied the powerhouse criterion.For ease of interpretation, scores above 100 were capped at 100 (indicating that the food provides, on average, 100% DV of the qualifying nutrients per 100 kcal). Items in cruciferous (watercress, Chinese cabbage, collard green, kale, arugula) and green leafy (chard, beet green, spinach, chicory, leaf lettuce) groups were concentrated in the top half of the distribution of scores whereas items belonging to yellow/orange (carrot, tomato, winter squash, sweet potato), allium (scallion, leek), citrus (lemon, orange, lime, grapefruit), and berry (strawberry, blackberry) groups were concentrated in the bottom half.

Saturday, June 7, 2014

The man behind Alinea, one of the world’s best restaurants, discusses edible balloons and his recovery from tongue cancer

Michelin-starred chef Grant Achatz - FT.com:

There is no sous vide machine, no dehydrator, not even a liquid nitrogen tank in Grant Achatz’s kitchen. Instead, it looks a bit like a fresh-out-of-university flat share. The kitchen is, in some ways, a testament to the working hours the chef still puts in nine years after he opened Alinea, an avant-garde Chicago restaurant known for dishes involving pillows that emit lavender-scented air, peppermint snow served over pine needles, and beetroot juice drunk from a block of ice.
... He earned his reputation as a mad scientist thanks to his creations at Alinea, where the 18-course menu at present includes squab “inspired by Miro” and an edible green apple balloon filled with helium.
When his team perfected the balloon, the first thing he said was “make a YouTube video right away – get it on the internet so that . . . it’s ours”. In an industry with few safeguards against theft, the internet is a useful way to unofficially copyright recipes – one of the reasons why Achatz says it is the most important tool in his kitchen. It is also useful for self-promotion – Achatz is active on Twitter – sourcing ingredients and keeping tabs on other chefs. The advent of food blogging in the early 2000s “changed everything”.
“I could look at Mugartiz or El Bulli without going to Spain – I could know exactly what was going on,” he says.

Sunday, June 1, 2014

A history of knish - the Jewish soul food

The cook books keep coming don't they. And more and more specialised too. Take this one:


It's a history of the Jewish baked delicacy filled with meat or vegetables that i under going renewed popularity in New York.
Like to try one? There's a recipe here.